“Spring Awakening” drops the F-bomb on its audience before they walk into the theater. And the B-word. (Both are in song titles.) And if you’ve been paying attention, you also know you’re going to see a woman’s breasts. And a couple of heated sex scenes — gay and straight.

Those are hardly the reasons I fell in love with this Tony-winning musical and its Grammy-winning soundtrack. But they certainly helped get me, and others, in the door again and again.

My story isn’t unique, but it does reveal a rare obsessive side that bares itself only on life-affirming, expectation-skewing art.

I saw “Spring Awakening” for the first time in December 2009, when the national tour stopped at the Buell Theatre for a few weeks. I was touched by the story of these teenage students making their way through school, life and relationships — the innocence of a first kiss, the frank discussions on sexuality, the serious decisions that followed.

I was there on opening night, and I was moved to tears and stomach-turning surprise, chills and stomach-churning empathy — emotions normally dedicated to my favorite albums or deep conversations with lifelong friends. This was different.

The power of music, the potency of drama, the immediacy of theater and the weight of community touched me. The next morning I walked down to the Denver Center box office and bought four more pairs of tickets.

“My friends and family need to see this,” I remember thinking. But that was an excuse. I needed to see it … repeatedly.

I’ll see it again Monday when the musical plays Beaver Creek’s Vilar Center. And I’ll see it again, twice, when it plays two shows at the Buell Theatre Feb. 15-16.

I told you, it’s obsessive. I’m not like this with much else.

Well, there was “Rent.” Same story, a dozen-plus years ago. Tears Laughter. Chills. Repeat.

So why was I surprised at the slug to the chest that was “Spring Awakening”? Because that kind of cultural experience, what I went through in college with “Rent” and then later with “Spring Awakening,” is extraordinarily rare. You might memorize all the words to Britney Spears’ new single. You might go see “Black Swan” a second or third time. You might cry at the Michael Jackson-inspired Cirque du Soleil. But those encounters don’t change your worldview.

“Spring Awakening,” though, drop-kicked the musical theater establishment, which sorely needed somebody to grab it by its shoulders and shake it, jar its sensibilities, throw its stodgy, anachronistic formulas out the door. Like “Urinetown,” “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Who’s Tommy” before it, “Spring Awakening” changed the rules on Broadway.

Why is this musical about sex and knowledge, love and atheism, so powerful?

For one thing, sitting onstage with the actors helps. “Spring Awakening” sells 20 to 30 onstage seats for each show, and being that close — sometimes uncomfortably so — to the mic-in-hand action is a visceral thrill. You see the actors pull sheathed mics from inside jacket pockets; spittle spurts from their mouths as their rock ‘n’ roll frenzy mounts.

The music, too, is the best Broadway has produced in more than a decade. What a stunning comeback for mid-’90s one-hit-wonder Duncan Sheik — and a poignant answer to his undervalued records. The blasting rock epics get the audience jazzed, but the ballads provide the thoughtfulness that gives the musical its inspired back story.

Let’s not forget: This is about kids finding their way. With their parents and boyfriends and teachers. And while the script has obvious flaws (the too-smart observations of these teens sometimes ring false) it’s an artfully sculpted package everybody can relate to. Regardless of your religion, politics or chastity, you were once a teenager with questions you were too afraid to ask.

Tapping that 20-years-ago you — the you who wasn’t afraid to be an unabashed fan and love something so completely — might just unexpectedly move the current you to see the show for the first time … and again. And again?

Ricardo Baca is the editor of The Cannabist. After 12 years as The Denver Post's music critic and a couple more as the paper's entertainment editor, he was tapped to become The Post's first ever marijuana editor and create The Cannabist in late-2013. Baca also founded music blog Reverb and co-founded music festival The UMS.

Vic Damone, a pop crooner whose creamy baritone and heartthrob good looks propelled his success at the jukebox and on-screen in the post-World War II era, and for five decades more in nightclubs and concert halls, died Feb. 11 at a hospital in Miami Beach. He was 89.